From the Coca-Cola awning at the newsagent's to the looming O2 billboard on the high street, the succession of Calvin Klein ads on the tube escalator and the McDonald's-branded steps, the journey to work becomes a bombardment of marketing messages that would leave Roland Barthes' head spinning.

In one 45-minute journey, the average London commuter is exposed to more than 130 adverts, featuring more than 80 different products. Only half of that information makes any impact, while unprompted we can remember none of the blur of adverts. In an entire day, we're likely to see 3,500 marketing messages.

We know these facts thanks to new technology tested by the Guardian this week. To be specific: a pair of Joe 90-style spectacles attached to an unflattering bumbag. This unlikely looking contraption could prompt a sea change in the way advertisers and big brands spend £14bn on advertising every year.

It is called the Eye Contact, and it's capable of capturing on film everything that you see during a typical day. The Guardian wore the goggles for four hours, recording a bus and tube journey to Oxford Circus and a shopping trip up Bond Street.

The experiment, analysed with the help of ID Magasin, the company which developed the device, highlighted both the extent to which individuals are bombarded by commercial images and how adept most have become at screening out advertising messages. The results of our experiment showed that 99% of adverts make little or no impact.

ID Magasin, which has been testing the technique for the past year and is about to start using it in the field for its first UK client, claims big brands are facing an increasingly difficult job to reach consumers with advertising messages.

"We now have a far more informed consumer and shopper and a far more cynical consumer and shopper," said Siemon Scamell-Katz, chairman of the research company.

Wearing the spectacles, which have a tiny camera inserted into the bridge, along with the battery pack, LCD screen and hard disk recorder strapped to the waist, I spent four hours in London's West End.

Analysing the footage, Roz Plowright, the research analyst overseeing the experiment, showed the extent to which most advertising has become little more than a blur of urban wallpaper. Flicking through a pile of newspapers and magazines on the tube, Ms Plowright noted how the eyes habitually flitted away from the adverts. I couldn't recall what any of them were for. And while she recorded hundreds of adverts en route, none registered without prompting.

Mr Scamell-Katz said: "What is the role that advertising plays? There was a belief in the past that if you put a Persil advert on television, the next day they would go out and buy Persil. That's obviously no longer the case. And how many times do you hear people say that they saw a great ad but they can't remember what it's for?"

Later analysis showed that during a 45-minute journey, I had been exposed to more than 130 different advertising "elements" showcasing more than 80 brands. I was "looking" at adverts for 29 minutes but couldn't recall a single brand without prompting.

When prompted, it emerged that just over half of the adverts had actually made an impression, typically those for products I was interested in and to which I was exposed for more than 10 seconds, as against fewer than five seconds for others.

Over a later 90-minute period, I was exposed to 250 different advertising messages, featuring more than 100 different brands in 70 different formats. While an advert on a bus for the new Harry Potter film made an impression when prompted, not a single advert on taxis registered.

"Our business has always been about tilting at windmills," said Mr Scamell-Katz. "I've always hated established ways of thinking. When you push them and push them they're based on some pretty nebulous ideas."

The message is one that the advertising industry is not keen to hear but is slowly waking up to, he said. "Ad agencies are very good at television but know very little about instore advertising for example," he said. "I've always had a bit of a cynicism about advertising and how impactful it really is. Nine in 10 new products fail, which suggests that the whole model for developing products is flawed."

Only by getting to know consumers better can advertisers cut through the clutter, he believes. "We really need to go back to basics to understand that people don't want 3,500 media messages every day. You probably only want three that are relevant to your life."

The numbers

In 90 minutes, Owen saw 250 adverts from more than 100 brands in 70 different formats. The number recalled without prompting was 1